My list of reasons yesterday as to why Jesus would single out children as particularly suited for heaven was by no means complete. Some of you have already submitted other entries, and more additions are encouraged. [By the way, our link to comments is found by clicking on “Visit the Catch online” at the bottom of this email. Comments can be accessed at the bottom of each devotional.]
It hit me yesterday that I had failed to include one of the most important areas where kids have it all over us adults, and that would be in the area of creativity.
One of the requisites of a creative mind is the ability to see things from a fresh perspective. This is where the kids come in. Children don’t have the realistic limits on their imaginations that adults have. They can put things together any way they want. And even though they may be outside the realm of the possible, nevertheless, unfettered imaginations can spark new approaches to tired old problems.
I am suddenly thinking of the time they brought a blind man to Jesus and he spat on the man’s eyes, touched him and asked if he could see anything, to which the man replied, “I see men as trees, walking” (Mark 8:24). Although Jesus placed his hands on the man’s eyes again, and this time he saw clearly, I wonder if he might have been at all tempted to leave the man with his walking trees. Walking trees are a kind of refreshing change to seeing people walking around like they always do. C.S. Lewis created walking trees in his Chronicles of Narnia and I’m sure it was thinking like a child that gave him the idea. Children would have no problem with walking trees. That’s the type of imagination they have all the time.
John Fischer The Catch 
Psalm 104:16 Imagination all the time:-)
Ya can’t out-run God’s watering can! 🙂 http://tiny.cc/ifj7s
John,
I don’t remember walking trees in the Chronicles of Narnia, but I do very much remember walking trees (the Ents) from Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
Be well,
Bob
Definitely in the Rings, but I thought Lewis had some too. I may be mistaken.
Unfortunately, sometimes their creativity can be squelched by those that don’t appreciate viewing the world outside the lines. My grand-daughter told me the other day one of her teachers made her redo a picture she colored because she colored a camel purple. Her teacher said, “Camel’s are not purple. Do it again!” She threw the pic away. Sad!
When a similar thing happened to my daughter in kindergarten she said to the teacher, “Excuse me, but I’m the artist.”
Hi John
My take on Mark 8:24 is a bit different. I like to believe Christ healed this man in a 2 step process to prove to us in “modern” times that the miracle actually happened. There are recent documented cases of eyesight being surgically restored and the patient experiences such a stimulus over load the brain has a hard time processing the new stimuli and thus the patient has a hard time adjusting. I do not know what this conditioned is called but it seems the man Christ healed in the first step was suffering from that condition. Now to my point: it is safe to say that no one had their eye sight surgically restored 2000+ years ago, so this condition was not know about back then. So what caused Mark to record a statement that was so nonsensical “men walking like trees”? I like to believe that God willed it as an aid to strenghten our faith in these times when that nonsensical statement makes sense.
This one intrigued me.
You see, I am legally blind. I average 20/200 to 20/400 on the eye chart. At 20/400 I can’t always see that big “E” well. Anyway, I have episodes where I “see” something but it takes a minute or so for my brain to figure out what it is.
I wonder if it is this separation of seeing and comprehending that the blind man experienced? And, if you think about it, kids don’t always care if they comprehend, they just enjoy the experience of seeing and sometimes making up their own definitions. That’s creativity.
It is faith when we trust that God comprehends and has His own Holy definitions — even when we don’t.
By the way, there are such things as “Walking Trees”. You can’t out create the Creator!
Yes, I think that is the point. Sometimes God doesn’t give us clear sight but he asks us to believe anyway.
Perhaps JRR Tolkien’s walking trees in Lord of the Rings, aka, the Ents? I’m not recalling walking trees in Narnia…a good point, tho! 🙂
John: You were correct. C.S. Lewis had trees that walked and danced. The Magician’s Nephew recounts Aslan calling Narnia to life and saying “be walking trees…”; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe references the Tree Women (Dryads) who gathered with everyone else before the battle with the White Witch; and in Prince Caspian Lucy sees trees “moving” and “walking about” in a “complicated country dance” to recount just a few of his references to walking trees.
Yea! Vindicated!